Once again, I must extend my deepest, and most sincerest apologies to you all. Recently, at work, they’ve cracked down and completely blocked all external internet sites, and on top of that, run regular scheduled centerwide scans for any open browser that bypasses the firewall. Seeing as work was my primary place of blogging adventures because typically when I get home, I’m swamped with like… everything… I haven’t had much time, if any, to post anything remotely interesting.

In my folder, I’ve got tons of screenshots, quotes, Socializing 101 ideas, and all around qwirky randomness everyone I know loves and enjoys. I promise I’ll be able to pick it up once again when the insanity in my life starts to die down. But till then, here’s a summary of what you’ve missed.

Mika’s Top 10 This Week:

1. Amber is still a noob.
2. The guild downed Mimiron, Vezax, and got Yogg into phase 2 before we started having problems.
3. I’ve rolled 3 new toons. 2 on the Earthen Ring server, look for Reikyva (58- Nelf DK) or Ryni (5-Nelf Rogue) if your interested for some fun RP, or Sylvyya (5-Belf Rogue) on Cenarion Circle ^_~
4. Reì on Azgalor has been racking achievements left and right and occationally topping charts.
5. My RP blog still isn’t quite finished yet, still putting the final touches on that one too.
6. Thanks to Tharion Greyseer he’s helping me get some reference points to get a possible career in writing off the ground, so I’m looking into that.
7. I’m getting ready for the big move, leaving on October 1st (Yay!)
8. Guild Drama has escalated through the roof because of a particular Hunter who is the single most egotistical, self-centered, rude, arrogant, piece of sixteen year old shit I’ve ever met.
9. Mika finally did ToC 10 man with a pug who one shot everything but faction champtions. (We had no mages, no locks, no hunters… virtually no CC. BURN THE DPS!!)
10. Did I mention Amber is still a noob?

There it is, folks… Mika’s Top 10 You Missed this week.

Disclaimer: I’ll be going into further details in the near future regarding some points… Amber’s failsauce… self-explainitory.

Once again, thank you thank you soooo much for being patient with me, and I’m soooo sorry for slacking. Point and laugh… I’m a scrub, lol.

I was sitting at my desk at work, and I had started typing up this lovely little raid healing guide for resto trees. Spec, Gear, abilities, situations, oh it was going to be lovely. But then I realized that ‘Hey… work doesn’t let me access like half the shit I need in order to make references or to do detailed research of different talent notes or ability notes.’ So… I was faced with the decision to scrap it and save it till I got home, and look for something else to blog about… or just BS and look stupid with a half-assed healing guide.

I chose to save it and wait. ^-^

So as I sat in my cubicle… staring at a loan account waiting to be processed because some dumb ass doesn’t know how to type in their driver’s license state, it dawned on me.

We were all little baby nubcakes and one point in time, I sure do remember I was!

Here’s my story of how and why I first started playing the game:

It was August of 2007. I was currently working at a local Japanese restaurant as a waitress serving sushi to snobby patrons at a hibachi grill who were commenting about my kimono I spent 200.00 on. (It’s really pretty, I’ll have to show you all one day.) I finish serving the food and I go back into the back room with my coworkers.

Now I wasn’t aware of this, but out of about the 25-30 people who worked there, 5 people actually played WoW. One of them, a real close friend of mine named Tyler who plays Doriany and Shinjinku on my server US-Azgalor. When I sit down, they were all chit-chatting about something or another, and I just sat and listened. I had no clue what they were talking about, but they were really REALLY into the conversation.

At one point Tyler looked at me and said, “You should start playing.” I kinda laughed, looked at him like he was crazy, and asked why. “Um… because I play, duh!” We all laughed, and I just shook my head. “I dunno… seems kinda dorky.” (Little did he know then, or even still knows now… I’m more of a dork than people realize). He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“If you make a hundred bucks in tips tonight, you have to go buy it.” I rolled my eyes, laughed, and said fine, whatever.

So a few hours later that night I was standing in line with vanilla WoW and BC in my hands and my 120 bucks I made in tips that night. (Which is really good considering waitresses only got half of their tips) and I went home to install the game.

Looking through the different classes, I was trying to decide what I wanted to role. I knew I wanted to be an Elf, but since all my friends were alliance, I couldn’t be the blood elf warlock I wanted to be, so I had to be a Night Elf. The hard part… do I wanted to be a hunter or a druid?

I knew nothing about either class. The only deciding factor was I could TRANSFORM INTO ANIMALS!!!

So I rolled a druid, woo-hoo!!!

My first night, Tyler was online with me helping me out, and convinced me to bring my druid from Teldrassil to Stormwind. “WTF Stormwind? Eh… okay?” He got a mage buddy of his to port me… and when I get there, I’m running around like “Ooooh…. Ahh…. It’s sooo. Pretty!” I run to the outside gates, and I see people dying everywhere and I’m like “OMG DON’T KILL ME I JUST MADE HER!!”

Tyler thought it would be hilarious to bring me to Stormwind in the middle of a raid. So I ran… I ran far far away, getting killed by monsters left and right. I didn’t know what my abilities were, or how they functioned, I was a total idiot. And that lasted till I was probably about 60+ and realized how much of an idiot I was for leveling resto.

Yeah… I’m a dork.

It took me over a year to even be considered competent enough to fully understand the gaming aspects for my group of RL friends to accept me as an actual WoW player.

I’m sure everyone has heard that line, “Here’s yer sign…” from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, where a joke just flies over someone’s head and the irony of the situation is almost incomprehensible? Well… I had a “Here’s yer sign…” moment last night.

Remember how I said we were going to ‘steamroll’ Naxx 25 because we’ve had it on farm for heaven knows how long? And remember how I said that I was either going to have a post full of Win or a post full of Fail? Well… even though we’re trying to progress in Ulduar 25, but see to be getting stuck with the same people who are clueless, we still can’t even clear more than one wing in Naxx 25 in two and a half hours.

….Here’s yer sign…

It took me a moment, and as much as I hate to admit it -in which I didn’t want to publicly admit it in front of everyone- but should we really, honestly and truly, be trying to replace Naxx 25 runs with Ulduar 25 runs with the gear level of 60% of the raid barely, just barely, at Ulduar 10 standards??

Last night, granted yes we did have some of our core DPS, healers, and a core tank, but the rest of the group, some composed with a sprinkle of alts, should NOT have taken 2 ½ hours to clear construct wing in Naxx 25.

Let me give you a break down on how this run went.

Patchwerk
This fight, is not hard.

1st Attempt
So far so good, get Patchwerk to 60%… Mikata bites the dust, hateful tank down, tried to Brez, didn’t get it in time, half the raid down, we wipe it.

Mikata only has 38.6k health… arjthgapghap;g And I was a hateful tank because the other alt tank who was tanking the boss only had 35k health.

Thaddius
We spend 20 MINUTES figuring out who is healing, who is tanking, who is DPSing what side, Hunt and Amber argue over recount because Hunt is retarded and needs to be globally muted sometimes, and it’s just OMFG LET GO.

Since Murri can’t prot DPS for shit (like my tank spec feral dps is any better, aisjhgpajg), he’s tanking one of the bosses. They both die, we jump down to Thadd. About 30 seconds in we hear.

Atropus: “Murri… do NOT pull him off me, watch your THREAT!!”
Murri: “Oh, sorry, my bad. I’m in defensive stance.”
Macharious: “Why are you in defensive stance? Switch to zerker stance.”
Murri: “Alright, but I’ll switch back here soon, I get more DPS in defensive stance.”
Macharious: “No the fuck you don’t, stay in zerker stance.”

Thaddius dies.

Keep in mind, between every pull we have to stop or slow down for one reason or another. Someone leaves or someone has to be replaced, or someone has to be globally muted, WTFE. This shit is taking too damn long.

We go to try our hand in the Military Wing.

Instructor Razuvious

1st Attempt
The healers can’t seem to keep the understudies up for shit, and they keep dying. So what happens?

WHY ARE THE ADDS DYING, THE BOSS IS RUNNING AROUND EVERYWHERE, HALF THE RAID IS DEAD, PICK UP AN ADD, TAUNT, BONE ARMOR, OMFG!!!!!!

Everyone dies.

We call it a night.

Yes… a night full of disappointments, Here’s yer sign… that leads me to the conclusion:

How can we expect to make very much progress in Ulduar 25 when we can barely… BARELY handle a raid we’ve had on farm for so long. I’m not sure if it was the lack of focus, or the lack of commitment, but we shouldn’t have had these problems. I get the feeling that most of these new recruits just aren’t taking it seriously. (Yes, I know it’s a game, get the fuck off my back, I don’t like wasting 3 hours of my life for school yard bullshit in a game I play to enjoy.)

Thanks to my wonderful friend Ky from Casual Hardcore, I’ve been introduced, and labeled with the term ‘shitstorming’ from my apparent reaction to his post on our guild forums.

Now, I’m going to show you what apparent ‘shitstorming’ means by the amount of QQ in my posts that I didn’t even realize were there until after I reread them the next day.

Summing up our posts wouldn’t nearly do the justice from our forum, so I’ll just go ahead and quote directly from the forums.

And to think, our poor lovable mage Miss BB started all this with a minor question if we could just run a few farm raids for low geared guildies.

Kyrilean

OK, this might make some of you think I’m a prick, but I’m going to speak my mind anyway because I’ve reached an age where I don’t care much what people think of me.

Last night’s Naxx run was frustrating to say the least. Wiping on the 2nd trash pull in a raid we’ve had on farm for months is not a great way to start the raid. I personally didn’t want to go because like Mach said, I’m one of the ones that has run it to death on three toons now.

Erdkrieg, my only current toon that may need an item or two still from Naxx25, was already saved this week. Maedchen needs nothing. Kyrileanthos needs nothing. So my attendance to that raid was solely to support the guild and helping people to not only have a chance to raid something, but get a few pieces of gear or emblems.

The reason I was frustrated with Naxx25 wasn’t exactly because of the constant wiping. It was rather because of the inane chatter going on in vent that led me to believe that a good majority of the raid wasn’t paying attention. It may be Naxx, but when people are screwing around not really caring what they’re doing, wiping, and then continue to chatter about random things obviously not paying attention to the raid, I get irritated.

So that said, I am more than happy to use any of my three healers to support a guild Naxx25 or other raid, but I am not OK supporting a guild run where people are going to screw around and not take it seriously. I’m a casual player with a hardcore raider mentality. If I’m going to raid I don’t want to do it half-assed. I hate afk’ers, alt-tabbers, people that don’t run back after a wipe, etc. It isn’t fair to others and whether I’m naive or not to expect others to return the favor, I still expect it.

Macharious

I hear what you are saying Kyr, and I agree with just about everything. Unfortunatly I havn’t reached your age yet lol so I don’t think I could have put it as well as you just did. That is one thing that I would like to add to the requirments of anyone who wishes to lead raids for us. This game is about having fun and socializing…but wiping is not fun. I have always had a hardcore raiding mentality but I’ve never raided hardcore. If it were 100% up to me we would be in ULD25 4-5 days a week pushing through progression, Granted if I did that very few of you all would want to do it with me so that leaves us with our current situation. I am not going to say no “sidebar” conversations…but when we reach the point where it is a distraction and we die becuase of it, it needs to stop.

And 1 more side note: A whipe does not mean the following:

1) HEY WE’RE ALL DEAD! time for a BIO!
2) Man, that sucked! I think I’ll watch TV while others run back so they can Rez me.
3) Looks like we’re close to a boss, I think I’ll have a smoke.
4) I’m thirsty, brb getting (insert desired drink)

See what I am getting at? Downtime between wipes wastes a lot more time that I think everyone realizes.

Then here I come, SHITSTORMER MIKATA, GO!!

Mikata

Personally, as you all may know, in game over vent I’m a very VERY social person when I become confortable with the group. I like to joke around, kid, etc to lighten the mood… and I know most of the time I don’t know my play, and I have a tendency to speak out at the most inopportune times when I should know better to keep my mouth shut.

In my opinion, idle conversation, chit-chat, jokes are okay during trash (unless it’s Ulduar, because Ulduar trash is Srs Bsnz), but come boss time, and I’m getting better at this, conversations need to come to a stop and we need to focus on what we’re doing, even if it’s a boss we’ve farmed 12,458,556,142 times, because there’s still the possibility to wipe if just ONE person isn’t paying attention. (Grobb, Thadd, KT, and 4 Horsmen) And that’s not including if you’re a healer or tank. That’s just DPS that can cause a wipe in Naxx alone.

And I agree with the tabbing out, and the running back, and the afking, and just the general Bullshit people do after a wipe. It is really frustrating because instead of everyone running back and buffing and going, we have sit spend twice as much time ressing, then waiting for the afk’ers or tabbers to come back, then buff, then ready check, then starting the encounter. I make a note that before a raid, I have all of my essencials in-game and out-of-game ready before hand. (Reagents, repaired in game, have a smoke, get a drink, maybe a little snack outside of game) That way I don’t have to go afk unless we’re like 2 hours in and I have to piss like a pregnant russian race-horse.

Bottomline… yes, we have slackers who don’t share a ‘hardcore raider’ mentality, and they’re just casually along for the ride to have fun with friends, but they don’t understand how much that frustrates the rest of us.

And dear god I started ranting… I’M DONE!!

Kyrilean

Don’t misunderstand me. Some of the best raids I have been on have been wipe nights were joking was about the only thing we could do to alleviate the situation. It’s the not paying attention and not bringing your a-game that frustrates and upsets me. There’s a difference.

Taking a bunch of new people that don’t know the fights in a Naxx25 at this point and having them make mistakes wouldn’t frustrate me. They need a chance to learn just like anyone else. It was the impression that was given from people that do know the fights, even if they’re on alts, that they weren’t paying attention.

I have to say that overall the guild officers are doing a fantastic job and deserve our thanks and respect when they’re leading raids. It’s not an easy job.

Mikata

I understand what you’re saying Ky, but my point was that while it’s fun and games for MOST of the group, for SOME of the group is a hassle to pick up the slack of someone who really doesn’t want to be there, is pretty much forcing themselves because they want to progress. It’s aggrivating when instead of running back, someone wants to tab out, or go afk, and fuck off… or even worst, just sit there and openly admit they’re too lazy to run back and joke because they think it’s cute.

I love, actually no, I prefer to talk and have fun during a raid, but like you said earlier, when that joking and fun causes a distraction, it quickly turns from fun and games to “Angry Raid Leader STFU AND LET’S FINISH THIS SHIT SO I CAN LOG AND GO SMOKE A CIGARETTE”

*eyes Steve*

Regardless, it’s one thing to make things friendly and fun, dicking off and circle jerking each other in vent on trash and ‘Lol Die to the Frogger Boss’ because you had lag. “Hahahaha…. point and laugh… let’s go.” But it’s another when you’re trying to do 4 horsemen, and two people are in the back trying to comminicate with one another as to when to switch, but you’ve got someone else over vent being loud and obnoxious and they think they’re being cute. Trash = okay to talk, Some Bosses = Okay to talk, Other Bosses = STFU and Pay Attention.

Also…

(God I can’t stop with the QQs today, fuck!!)

I have seen this before… and if I see it again, I will chew someone’s head off.

Don’t try to be cute and funny during a boss fight. Don’t stand in fire thinking you’re going to get healed. Don’t stand near others if you’re injected with a mutagen because you’re still casting. Don’t ignore adds or the boss if you’re instructed to kill something. Don’t engage the boss unless you’re the tank and EVERYONE is present and ready. Don’t talk back or complain about DPS or Healing assignments.

Once again… I’m done.

Now will all this said and done in the General Forums where EVERY MEMBER OF OUR GUILD CAN READ THE THREAD, let’s see how many ACTUALLY read it, learn from it, adjust because of it, and do better thanks to it.

I’ll jump on the bandwagon and follow everyone elses trend of posting what THEY think about the supposed “leaks” of the expansion, what’s they think is going to happen, and how people should feel.

Heh… not really.

To be honest, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut and wait for the official word from Blizz on what the FUCK is going on before getting my hopes up or down. But I can tell you think, is said ‘leaks’ are true…

1.) Yes, I would be a very VERY sad polar bear if most of these ‘predictions’ are correct.
2.) Yes, I would cry in a corner and /wrists is my lovely lore is butchered.
3.) Yes, I would laugh at the horde for having everything they know all fucked up, haha.
4.) Yes, I would be very angry at Blizz for a long long time if they didn’t actually put forth an effort to explain everyones favorite question, “WHY!?”
5.) Yes, I would rofl for days at the overuse of the term “Holy Cow” when we kill a Tauren Pally.
6.) Yes, I would be confused as to why ANYONE would want to play a goblin… WTFWHY!?
7.) Yes, I would attempt to bore a powerdrill through my brain because I know I will have to listen to Ambro talk about how terrible it is for days.

That is, only of course, if all of these god-forsaken ‘leaks’ from a ‘reliable source’ is true. Ha.

If not, I’m going to Lolololol at MMO-Champion, WoW.com, etc. becase as Anna nicely put it, its thier asses that get burnt for false reporting.

In other news…

In less than three weeks I’ll be moving from Florida to Illinois, and for those of you that read Ambro’s blog…

Please pity my poor soul…

>_>

I’ll be moving across the street from her… literally walking distance from her immense, unpredictable, /RW spamming WRATH!!!

Being a healer and newly converted tank, I feel I’m in my right to QQ all day long about terribad DPS. (Yes… terribad: adj. describing one who is not only bad at what they do, but terrible at being bad, making them terribly bad which is a bazillion times worst than being just FAIL. Thus terribad. Ex. You have Poor-Bad-Terrible-Fail-Terribad.)

I’m sure everyone knows the type of DPS I speak of.

You have the ‘1337’ DPS:
This is the DPS that has been playing the game since the begining of time, and know the in, odds, and outs of thier class and all spec’s associated. They can sit and rip astomishing numbers and amaze people with thier DPS… yeah, that’s great. Said DPS also doesn’t know have to control aggro, and proceed to TRY and pull off tanks because they don’t want to inturrupt rotation and lose DPS. They then proceed to die and eat dirt.

You then have the ‘Lazy’ DPS:
These folks are the ones who have been playing for a long time, but they’re lazy. They’re on time to raids and attend every week, but refuse to do thier homework, and wind up missing a detail and wiping the raid. For instance! On Kolo… when you see the message, “Kologarn focuses his eye beams on you!” DON’T FREAK THE FUCK OUT AND RUN THROUGH THE DPS AND CUT THEM ALL IN HALF DAMNIT!!!!

And let’s not forget the ‘Alters’:
Alters are people who have uber geared mains and have a fresh 80 for an alt they expect to be carried through 25 mans to rapidly gain gear through loot-whoring. When they’ve recieved all they can get on thier main, they want to catch that alt up as quickly as possible with little to no effort to the rest of the guild to become more competition for people’s MAINS.

These are your 3 species of what I like to call ‘Terribad DPS’

Everyone knows a handful of these type of people, and if you claim you don’t then I say you’re full of shit and to get the fuck out. These are the type of people that make the gaming experience less enjoyful for me. Granted, yes it is a game, and yes, the idea of a game is to progress and get better, learn more, and become the best, BUT THIS ISN’T AN RPG HERE, IT’S A FUCKING MMO!! YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE PLAYING!!

Things would be SO much more relaxing is there was some sense of compassion amongst players. Something I dislike about DKP is that if someone is wearing a blue, and someone is wearing a level 213 item, that one wearing the 213 might bid higher on the item even though the one wearing the blue could use that MASSIVE upgrade. I can recall passing on many items because I know eventually, I can always come back and get it later.

Granted, there have been times when I’ve lost on the same much desperately needed item like Grim Toll that I’ve lost rolls on 11 times, and yes there’s a bitter taste in my mouth for a little while, I eventually get over it and work around it.

If players could learn to work with one another, help benefit one another, GET ALONG with one another, wouldn’t that make the game more enjoyable than to have a bank full of purples? If DPS could help the tank hold aggro, healers keep and extra eye on the raid or tanks, tanks make sure you’re paying attention to bebuffs and be ready with taunts or watch for a signal to move, raiders in general stay out of shit that hurts… things would go so much smoother!

Man, this entry has gone from DPS QQ to general raiding QQ.

Last night we went back into Ulduar 25, and in no way am I QQ’ing about my particular raid last night, it actually went fairly well. We downed XT, Kolo, and IC (which was a shock to me), and our Lovely Healing Officer Amber for our first Fragment for the Legendary Val’anyr. Last night over all went really well… the souce of my QQ you ask? Let’s just say I had a reminder or two last night despite the progress we made.